While ruling that Louisiana had legitimately exercised its powers, the Court's majority went much further to declare that the amendment - and its "due process" and "equal protection" clauses - applied exclusively to the plight of former slaves and, thus, were unavailable to any other American."--BOOK JACKET.

Thoroughly updated and greatly expanded from its original edition, this three-volume set is the go-to comprehensive resource on the legal, social, psychological, political, and public health aspects of guns in American life. • 450 alphabetically organized entries, including 100 new for this edition, covering key issues (suicide, video games and gun violence, firearm injury statistics) and events (workplace shootings, the Virginia Tech massacre) • 102 expert contributors from all academic fields involved in studying the causes and effects of gun violence • A chronology of pivotal moments and controversies in the history of firearm ownership and use in the United States • An exhaustive bibliography of print and online resources covering all aspects of the study of guns in the United States • Appendices on federal gun laws, state gun laws, and pro- and anti-gun-control organizations

The demise of the Confederacy left a legacy of legal arrangements that raised fundamental and vexing questions regarding the legal rights and status of former slaves and the status of former Confederate states. As Harold Hyman shows, few individuals had greater impact on resolving these difficult questions than Salmon P. Chase, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1865 to 1873.Hyman argues that in two cases -- In Re Turner (1867) and Texas v. White (1869) -- Chase combined his abolitionist philosophy with an activist jurisprudence to help dismantle once and for all the deposed machineries of slavery and the Confederacy.In Re Turner was a private law case decided at the federal circuit level. It involved a black woman's claim that she, a recent slave, was being held in involuntary, servitude. Elizabeth Turner's mother had apprenticed her to their former master, who had not abided by his contractual obligations to provide Elizabeth with training and compensation, substantively keepingher in slavery. Chase's decision, which relied upon due process and equal protection implications in the thirteenth amendment and the 1866 Civil Rights Act, confirmed the rights of emancipated slaves to bargain and contract with employers on a parity with white workers.Texas v. White was a public law case decided in the Supreme Court. It revolved around the issue of whether the holders of U.S. bonds seized and sold by the Confederate state of Texas could demand payment after the war from that state's newly reconstructed government. In effect, Chase and his associate justices were asked to determine the legality of actions committed by all former Confederate states and, thus, to define whatconstituted a state. Chase's opinion reaffirmed the permanence of the Union and its constituent states and the duty of the states to respect the legal rights and obligations of all citizens.Hyman's exemplary study provides

As our nation's most beloved and recognizable president, Abraham Lincoln is best known for the Emancipation Proclamation and for guiding our country through the Civil War. But before he took the oath of office, Lincoln practiced law for nearly twenty-five years in the Illinois courts. Abraham Lincoln, Esq.: The Legal Career of America's Greatest President examines Lincoln's law practice and the effect it had on his presidency and the country. Editors Roger Billings and Frank J. Williams, along with a notable list of contributors, examine Lincoln's career as a general-practice attorney, looking both at his work in Illinois and at the time he spent in Washington. Each chapter offers an expansive look at Lincoln's legal mind and covers diverse topics such as Lincoln's legal writing, ethics, the Constitution, and international law. Abraham Lincoln, Esq. emphasizes this often overlooked period in Lincoln's career and sheds light on Lincoln's life before he became our sixteenth president.

Lochner v. New York (1905), which pitted a conservative activist judiciary against a reform-minded legislature, remains one of the most important and most frequently cited cases in Supreme Court history. In this concise and readable guide, Paul Kens shows us why the case remains such an important marker in the ideological battles between the free market and the regulatory state. The Supreme Court's decision declared unconstitutional a New York State law limiting bakery workers to no more than ten hours per day or sixty hours per week. By evoking its "police power," the state hoped to eliminate the employers' abuse of these workers. But the 5-4 majority opinion, authored by Justice Rufus Peckham and renounced by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, cited the state's violation of due process and the "right of contract between employers and employees," which the majority believed was protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Critics jumped on the decision as an example of conservative juidicial activism promoting laissez-faire capitalism at the expense of progressive reform. As series editors Peter Hoffer and N.E.H. Hull note in their preface, "the case also raised a host of significant questions regarding the impetus of state legislatures to enter the workplace and regulate hours, wages, and working conditions; of the role of courts as monitors of the constitutionality of state regulation of the economy; and of the place of economic and moral theories in judicial thinking." Kens, however, reminds us that these hotly contested ideas and principles emerged from a very real human drama involving workers, owners, legislators, lawyers, and judges. Within the crucible of an industrializing America, their story reflected the fierce competition between two powerful ideologies.

"Best known for his opinions in cases dealing with race and the Fourteenth Amendment particularly the 1873 Slaughter-House Cases, Miller has often been considered a misguided opponent of Reconstruction and racial equality. In this major reinterpretation, Ross argues that historians have failed to study the evolution of Miller's views during the war and explains how Miller, a former slave-holder, became a champion of African Americans' economic and political rights. He was also the staunchest supporter on the Court of Lincoln's controversial war measures, including the decision to suspend such civil liberties as habeas corpus." "The first biography of Miller since 1939, this welcome volume draws on Miller's previously unavailable papers to shed new light on a man who saw his dreams for America shattered but whose essential political and social values, as well as his personal integrity, remained intact."--BOOK JACKET.

This original and provocative book looks at an important constitutional freedom that today is largely forgotten: the right of assembly. While this right lay at the heart of some of the most important social movements in American history—abolitionism, women's suffrage, the labor and civil rights movements—courts now prefer to speak about the freedoms of association and speech. But the right of “expressive association' undermines protections for groups whose purposes are demonstrable not by speech or expression but through ways of being. John D. Inazu demonstrates that the forgetting of assembly and the embrace of association lose sight of important dimensions of our constitutional tradition.
Search for: